


GINUNGGAGAP

by roughmagic



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (mild and mostly implied) Suicidal Ideation, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Dream Sex, Eventual Happy Ending, Experimental Style, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Family Issues, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, M/M, Marvel Norse Lore, Other, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Sibling Incest, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, War Crimes, canon from multiple movies and unfortunately avengers infinitygame, odin critical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:54:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21974665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic
Summary: Then fields unsowed bear ripened fruit,All ills grow better, and the lost come back,And the mighty gods: would you know yet more?(Thor searches the Nine Realms for Loki, post-Endgame.)
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel), Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	1. MIDGARD

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mpdghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mpdghoul/gifts).



> This was an EXCELLENT prompt (Thor character study, mourning Loki, hallucinations and isolation) for a Xmas gift exchange that I was so so so blessed to get, and I jumped into it with both feet. There are minor warnings for implied exhibitionism, suicide/death ideation, generally just not coping well and a complete disregard for the MCU canon or attitude.

**=**

**MIDGARD**

In the beginning of the first years of New Asgard, capital of Tønsberg in the Northern Way of Midgard, the first Valkyrie King had ascended the throne to great celebration and success. Thor Odinson, last of the last Allfather, known to all as the God of Thunder, Titanslayer, and hero of Midgard and every other realm, made his home here. Through everything he had triumphed over the worst evils and dangers the universe had to offer, he still found no rest, plagued by fierce nightmares. 

Though he held council with his King and the other gods of Midgard, they could find no reason behind what ailed beautiful Thor, why food held no taste in his mouth and the sun would not warm his skin. 

“Perhaps you have fought too long: you were there at Ragnarok, and slew mad Titan Thanos after the Five Year Battle,” said the Panther, god in the lands to the south. “Come, turn to your people and king and redouble the glory of your home.” 

“Perhaps you haven’t fought enough: you’ve had no challenge since,” said the Raccoon, playing among the stars without a care. “Come, there are many planets beyond which must know your name and the bite of your axe, Stormcaller.” 

“Perhaps you must purge the dust of old battlefields,” said the Green Giant, towering over the other gods. “Come, gather the fruits of Midgard and perform with me a juice cleanse.”

But nothing would put Thor at rest, yet neither would he rouse. At last the King could no longer stand the sight of him wasting away in despair, and called for Thor to join her at the cliffs overlooking New Asgard, and the sea beyond.

\- - - - - - - - -

Valkyrie had a way of staring just long enough to make Thor want to say something, only for her to beat him to the punch, promptly throwing his conversational tactics out the window. “It’s about Loki, isn’t it.”

“I have a lot going on in my life,” Thor says, maybe too casually. “It doesn’t always have to be about Loki.”

This, he knows, is two lies. He has next to nothing going on besides worrying his friends and tanking Korg’s K/D on their shared Fortnite account. And, it’s always about Loki. 

He wishes they’d met somewhere else, the grass slapping against his legs as every cold, salty breeze rips past. The sun is white and the sky is blank, blue, but it’s as if Odin is just out of sight. If he turns, perhaps he’d see Loki. Or Hela, long hair tossing in the wind. They had been here once, or a place so like it as to be the same. 

“Hey.” Valkyrie steps in front of him, genuine displeasure and concern in her eyes. “Don’t you drift off. I’m sorting this out.”

“It’s just,” Thor smiles, frowns, creases his brow, shrugs. Runs through every expression like the appropriate one will stick. “He should be back, by now. Bruce fixed it, everything’s okay, but he’s not here.”

“A lot of Asgardians died on that ship, and they didn’t come back either.” She doesn’t say it harshly. Or too kindly, like she’s worried he’s fragile. 

“Heimdall did.”

“And he’s connected to whatever’s left of the Bifrost. Maybe it’s an anchor, maybe it’s the will of Yggdrasil, who knows.” They’ve had this argument before, only in fragments. Never all at once.

“What if he’s trapped in Valhalla?” Thor tries not to sound like he’s pleading, instead steps closer to her like sunlight between them might spoil the idea. That it’s a secret. “What if I just need to go and get him?”

“Then you’re both out of luck.” Valkyrie frames Thor’s face in her hands, deep eyes softening. “If Valhalla was a place you could go, the gate to it is probably a pile of rocks floating through space. With the rest of Asgard.”

“But there has to be a way. A back door, secret entrance, there’s always something.” Desperation makes his throat tight. “He has to _be_ somewhere.”

She reaches her arms up and around his neck, on tiptoes for the hug until Thor picks her up, no thought to it. Her hair smells like fish and woodsmoke and her nice conditioner that he secretly uses for his beard, and tears prickle threateningly. _If Valhalla is only the afterlife and there is no way to it but death, am telling her I want to die? Do I?_

“I won’t tell you to stay put, ignore it, drink about it,” Valkyrie says, thickly. She’s tearful, but better at hiding it than him. “Since we both know that doesn’t help. I just don’t know what would help. And I’m your king, so you tell me and I’ll make it so.”

“If I leave, if I look for him… I’m bound to either run into Loki, or find a way into Valhalla. Statistically, I’m pretty successful, so it should be one or the other.”

Valkyrie laughs too loud near his ear, which Thor prefers over the thought of her tears. Letting go, she drops back down to her feet, sighing. “Yeah, alright then. You want a going away party?”

“Oh, gods, no. Can you imagine everyone? ‘Sweet Thor, take these nålbound gloves from my eldest daughter for your sacred pilgrimage,’ no thanks. It’d go on forever.”

She laughs again, and Thor smiles for the first time in a long time. “Fine. Let’s go see what Heimdall says.”

\- - - - - - - - -

And so the King took Thor to the Gate Lord and heir to the Bifrost Heimdall, and asked him how Thor might travel once again among the realms, scattered among Yggdrasil’s dying boughs as they were. 

Heimdall greeted them with bittersweet cheer: he had known Thor would soon leave on a journey, but if it would help his friend, he wanted to part ways smiling.

“It will be lifetimes before the Bifrost can bear our weight again,” Heimdall said, but not without hope. “However, there is one way you might yet travel.”

“Please tell me it’s in a goat cart,” said the King.

“I have an apple of the World Tree, Yggdrasil,” said Heimdall, producing a fruit of regular size and tremendous beauty. “I had thought to plant it here, but destiny has kept it for you, Thor.”

So Thor learned: Yggdrasil’s apple might carry him in the instant of a lightning strike to any of the Nine Realms. A single bite would throw him to the cosmos, only forward, never returning to lands he had visited past on this journey. 

“That means,” Heimdall explained this sadly. “You may find it difficult to return home.”

“I expect every part of this to be difficult,” said Thor, embracing the other warrior, leaving him with a kiss on either cheek, the salt of their tears like ocean spray. “Mourn me, do not. Miss me, do not.”

“That is from Star Wars,” said the King, crying as well. “I’m banishing you, Thor Odinson.”

Thor said goodbye to his comrades, the warriors Korg Kronason and the Miek who had been by his side during the Five Year Battle. They saw Thor leaving as the god himself felt it to be: the right quest to undertake alone, knowing those who loved him wanted him to be happy.

“Farewell,” Thor said, armored as he would for battle, his enormous axe Stormcaller in hand. “Goodbye my King, my friends. I love you all very much.”

Then with a bite from the apple, Thor set out. 


	2. MUSPELHEIM

**==**

**MUSPELHEIM**

Taking his first bite of the Yggdrasil’s fruit, Thor found himself in another realm as quickly and easily as passing between rooms. Gone was New Asgard and the safe beauty of Midgard, replaced by a great cavern stretching so far in every direction as to be indistinguishable from the sky. The air was thick with smoke and the sound of lava, that steady burning.

“Muspelheim,” Thor said, trying not to be disappointed, for he had no friends in this land and knew of no one with any knowledge. “Off to a great start.”

And so Thor set Stormcaller on his back and began to walk, every fire of the primordial realm only embers now and no danger at all. 

The last time he had set foot on these dark and blasted rocks, Thor had defeated Surtur, the ruling fire Giant, and brought his helm to Asgard’s mightiest vault. There was no sign of another monster taking the throne, and even the small creatures found everywhere in the realms seemed quiet in Muspelheim.

Thor traveled for seven days under the sunless sky before reaching the remains of Surtur’s hold, and found it empty and silent: no imps nor demons prowled the hallways, and Thor followed the giant steps deep down to the heart of the dungeon.

At last he came upon a sigh that filled him with fear and hope all at once: growing from the deepest lava wellspring were two horns like branches, still small but undeniably the Crown of Surtur. 

“Not such a realm destroyer now, eh,” Thor said, reveling a little in the sight of a fearsome foe laid low. 

The lava bubbled, yet no answer came. The helm was as silent as a skull. Thor remembered, then, he was truly alone in Muspelheim. 

\- - - - - - - - -

The thing was, if he thought about it, Surtur returning in any form meant something. Logically, it meant that in the same way, Ragnarok wasn’t permanent. Or it was, but as Surtur returned, so should Asgard.

Thor lets himself think about this, the implications, staring at the white fire at the heart of Muspelheim, for a moment seeing figures. The shape of someone waiting.

_ I can smell the smoke from your ears,  _ says his memory of Loki, vivid enough to make Thor uneasy, shift his weight from foot to foot.  _ You’re truly thinking this out, hm? Well, let’s continue. _

__

  
  



	3. VANAHEIM

**===**

**VANAHEIM**

Taking a second bite of the still fresh apple, Thor arrived in a realm he could not place at once, cradled among high yellow hills, the sky’s dark clouds hanging low.

Awaiting him stood two handsome women, clothed in armor and decorated with bones small and large. Though they carried weapons, there was no anger or harm to behold in their hearts. 

“Hail and well met, Thor Freyason,” said one of the women, tossing a cloak of pelts to him, the fur waxy and fragrant. “You are late.”

“I didn’t know I was expected,” Thor admitted, taking a step forward and finding gravity drove him to take a knee. 

“There is quite a lot you don’t know,” said the other warrior, watching him try to acclimate to their planet, struggling but at last gaining his footing and donning the cloak. “Which we expected as well.”

“Well, I’m glad to have that going for me.” 

Taking in the women’s wild beauty and lack of distress at the gravity, Thor feels a pang of admiration and longing that leads him to realize the truth. “You are the Vanir? My mother’s people?”

“We have other claims to fame, but yes.”

“Freya was our princess before she was your mother.”

And with that, they set off at a pace which belied the effort of walking, and Thor followed. 

\- - - - - - - - -

There’s a period of thoughtlessness that Thor steps into, finding for the first time in a long time that his challenge is outside himself. The earth under his boots sinks under his weight, the delicate golden grass drags microabrasions along his skin and armor, and gravity sits on his head and shoulders, begging him to lay down. 

His last visit to Vanaheim had been a lifetime ago, in the lowlands where gravity played nice. Some sort of battle. He’d killed a Kronan with a single strike of his hammer and saved the day, whatever that had meant at the time. The sacred hills, home to the oldest Vanir and those who shunned Asgard’s light of civilization.

He thinks about placing one foot in front of the other, instead of what the Vanir might know about Loki, about Valhalla, about him. He can feel sweat collecting between his shoulder blades under the cloak. There is an old and persistent shame in him again that he’s failed his mother in so many respects, and now the wisest of her people are here to pass judgement.

_ All that healing you managed to scrounge up during the Time Stone incident and yet it’s still coming back to haunt you? _ Loki would tease him for that, for getting closure and yet needing more. 

Hadn’t he gotten, truly, to say goodbye to Frigga, in a way Loki never would? And still he feels the guilt of his inadequacy, the pointless and vicious loss of her, exposed before these two Vanir. 

If they think him weak, they don’t show it. Their walking pace outstrips his easily, but they never vanish over the steady, rolling horizon, clearly waiting for him to follow. 

It should have been enough. He had his moment. It should’ve been enough to have that stolen, unexpected goodbye, to have his mother comfort him one last time. 

“Hood up,” a Vanir announces, and before Thor can coax his arms to lift, the rain hits him like a blow from above, flat and devastating. He slides down the hill, footing gone in the softening earth, and strains to get free of the mud, to untangle from the grass. 

“Do you need help, Thor?”

“Yes, Thor, is Vanaheim too much for you?”

“No!” Thunder should echo when he says it, but there is only the rush of foreign rain, freezing cold and drumming on his back and ribs. 

When he at last struggles to his feet, the Vanir warriors are gone, and Thor resumes his walk alone.

Knowing himself, his body should adjust to these conditions, should further hone him to survive it. But it simply doesn’t get any easier. Every incline burns his muscles in a way no land should, every slope threatens to spill him on his ass into the mud again. 

Would Loki have fared better? Thor imagines him at his side. He’d complain about the mud. Maybe turn into something with hooves that isn’t bipedal, distribute his weight a bit more sensibly. 

Or, Thor thinks, perhaps he would be something small and simply let Thor carry him the distance.

That had annoyed him so much as a child, that Loki would transform on whims, just to catch a ride on Thor or trick him for fun. 

Wrenching a boot free from the mud, Thor stumbles and barely rights himself. Frigga had consoled him about it, as she always had. Wasn’t it a bit nice, to feel like you could help someone without even trying? _ Loki only ever does that with you, Thor.  _

He should’ve treasured that. He should’ve spent more time at home with his mother, learning from her the way Loki did, even if he never took to it much. The world was never going anywhere, but she was impossibly finite. 

If Surtur was returning, perhaps there was hope to be found here. The Vanir were known for wisdom, foresight, surely they would know something. 

The desperation drives him forward, head down and feet plodding. All light fades from the horizon as night falls, when finally the last slope leads to a hill larger than the rest, and Thor cranes his aching neck upwards. 

\- - - - - - - - -

And so Thor came to one of the sacred mounds of the Highland Vanir, a hollowed hill warmed by fire and smelling of smoky herbs and meats. Thor remembered the manners taught but rarely enforced by his mother, and removed his boots at the entrance, leaving his cloak to dry among others, and followed the sound of a hearth until at last he came into a communal chamber. 

There, his two Vanir escorts waited, accompanied by a third Vanir still cloaked in furs and crowned with antlers of a hundred year stag. 

“Thor Freyason,” The crowned Vanir said, at once very old and very young, difficult to place in every respect, as if the smoke of the fire changed them in Thor’s eyes. “You’ve grown up.”

“I would like to think so.” Thor seated himself at the fire, but found no food or drink offered. 

“Despite our rain’s best effort, you still stink of Muspelheim,” the Vanir said, with a smile. “How far your travels have taken you, to arrive here. And do you still search for Valhalla, as the bones predicted?”

“I do.”

“And is it still for the sake of Loki Farbautison?”

It shocked Thor to hear the name of the Frost Giant who must have bore Loki as an infant, and he wondered if the sacred bones of the Vanir had told them that. “I do. He is my brother, and my mother’s son just as much as I. Valhalla holds him when he should return to us.”

“Hm.” The Vanir did not agree or disagree to this, stirring the fire with a staff. “Asgardians find even their own heaven objectionable? May we find our Freya among the hills, then, and not in your halls.”

Despite himself, Thor took insult in this, but held his tongue. “The Vanir are known to be wise in ways unknown to other realms, and I ask humbly for your assistance. Would your bones know where to find Valhalla?”

“Did you know,” the Vanir said, slowly. “Asgard and Vanaheim were at war once, and may be so again one day. And once more we will send a princess south to treaty with a king, and once more she will leave behind her hides and stay in his lands for the sake of their sons.”

The troubles in Thor’s heart grew heavier, knowing that Surtur’s helm grew once more in Muspelheim, that some long cycle had begun once again.

“Freya gave up her name for peace, for her boys, and wore a cruel joke with grace.” The Vanir’s sadness is more powerful than their bitterness, eyes lost in the embers in the fire. “Did you never wonder why a queen was called ‘to fuck’?”

Thor felt a great shame all at once, empty hands set to clasping at the idea that his mother had given up part of her life for his and Loki’s, that perhaps she had been unhappy and he had no idea. That he had never rescued her from it, or even known to try. 

“Excuse me, Thor. I mistake you for your father, in a fit of sadness.” The Vanir’s gaze moves from Thor’s missing eye to the one he has left, for the first time. “Valhalla is Asgard’s heaven. We know nothing of it.”

Swallowing his guilt, Thor persisted. “Asgard is destroyed. Her spirit lives on with the people, but where will our victorious dead go, if we struggle to house even the living?”

“Fallen Vanir return to the hills. They roam as elk or meditate as ironblooms. One day I, too, hope to be grass stirred only by the wind. That is all I can offer you, Thor Freyason.” They rest their staff against their shoulder, and withdraw gnarled hands into the shadow of their cloak. “Perhaps it is better to see your lover in every thing but nowhere, than to endlessly look for him somewhere that is truly nothing.”

“My  _ brother _ ,” said Thor.

“Humph,” said the Vanir. 

\- - - - - - - - -

Thor left the mound, finding an overhang of rock protruding from the mound as shelter from the rain. The Vanaheim he remembered had been pleasant and honorable and civilized, not a place of survival and resignation. 

“And were those her two sides, as well?” Resting on his haunches, Thor allows himself a private moment of childishness, face in his hands. Frigga. Freya. Odin had kept Hela and their conquests secret, why should it tear at him so to know his mother had been a woman before she had been a queen? 

_ This wasn’t even the rock you were trying to kick over. _ Loki half-mocks, half-soothes, and Thor feels him again like a missing limb, the harsh pain noise of something that should be there and isn’t. His empty eye is more or less welded shut, but tears collect there anyway.  _ She loved you, and you can’t save her from her life as she lived it. That isn’t how time works, that isn’t how trees grow.  _

It feels like comfort he doesn’t deserve, although he knows it’s true. To pretend that Frigga couldn’t have changed her life if she chose to would be a disrespect to her memory. She had loved him, and she had loved Loki. And it was up to him to find Loki and bring him home, as she would want. 

He sees him for a moment, too-clearly, in the old leisurely rags of his prison, Loki shaggy and barefoot and hollowed out from screaming among broken furniture and spilled wine. The debris of the storm after learning of Frigga’s death. He stands tall and unbowed under the rain, water running down the long lines of his face and form, upturned with a pleasant smile. 

Thor turns away, too bitter at his own want for it. His want for Loki to be here, to be learning this with him, to remember their mother together. And to tease him as he put a slender arm over Thor’s shoulders.

It hurts like a deep fever to desire something so completely unattainable, and Thor stands up, body aching in the gravity and freezing from the chill of the rain. Inside, the elder Vanir is gone, leaving his two escorts looking up at him. 

“We were left with a prophecy for you,” one says, flatly and casually. 

The other looks up, mild. “Do you want it?”

“No, thank you.” Thor bows to them. If he were wiser he would accept, and he would stay a hundred years here to learn their ways and honor his mother. But maybe that’s what he can do in the next lifetime, or perhaps the next Thor will be smarter. 

Unbothered, the Vanir return their gaze to the fire, and Thor has the impulse to sit and tell them everything, explain why he’s here and how afraid he is of leaving and missing some opportunity, some confluence that would help him get to Valhalla, how he’s only just started and how lonely and enormous this task feels. 

The moment passes, and he shoulders his axe, runs a thumb over the unblemished red skin of the apple. 

  
  



	4. ALFHEIM

**====**

**ALFHEIM**

With another bite of the apple Thor found himself in Alfheim, home to the Light Elves. Upon hearing the thunder of his arrival and smelling the fruit of Yggdrasil, there was a beautiful commotion made, the sort of which Thor had precisely hoped to avoid here.

Every eligible Light Elf threw on their best silks and poured out to the meadow where he had appeared, and gradually a procession formed from the clamour, and Thor waded through the excited fluttering of glass wings and eyelashes to the palacehive of the Queen.

“O King of Asgard, slayer of Mad Thanos, Thor Odinson,” Queen Aelsa Featherwine declared upon seeing him, her arms wide and her second set of eyes shut demurely. “As ever it brings me such joy to open our home to you.”

“I’m about a third of all that these days,” Thor replied. “But thank you.”

“How modest, how mature,” Alesa cooed, entreating him to be comfortable with her on a private balcony, posed on the sacred leeward face of the palacehive. It looked out at the untouched meadows of Alfheim, both suns shining benevolently in their blue and red shifts, and the smell of the flowers persisted even at this height.

“So to what do we owe the honor?” The Queen reclined extravagantly, watching Thor sit somewhat stiffly on the nest of pillows. “Clearly you must want something, because you never visit otherwise.”

“That’s… true.” Thor admitted. “I’m on a bit of a quest.”

“Ah, my surprise,” Aelsa said, flatly.

“I’m searching for Valhalla. A soul lost to us by Thanos has not returned among those who have, and I fear he may be trapped there.”

“Um.” The Fairy Queen thought thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize your heaven could be a prison. What noble warrior do you seek there?”

“My brother, Loki.”

“Well, you can piss right off, then.”

“My Queen,” Thor began, and Aelsa held a hand up sharply to silence him, all eyes open and fixed on Thor Odinson.

“The Nine Realms are finally healing from the last calamity and you want to speed up the next? If death has finally caught your horsefucking brother, let it keep him as long as it can. I, for one, would rest easier. He has always been a menace.”

“You’re entitled to your objectively correct opinion,” Thor said, not upset and remaining gentle in his tone. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t sit right with me, seeing our realms regrow and seemingly begin anew, and that Loki isn’t here as well.”

“Do you remember the story of Baldr?” Queen Aelsa demanded, rudely, and Thor did have to swallow an equally rude reply, aided by counting backwards from ten.

“I remember the legend, yes.”

“If it was not true this lifetime then it will be in the next,” Aelsa snapped, revealing that she understood and accepted they were in just one part of a repeating cycle. “Baldr, most fair and beloved, is killed in a tragic accident-- facilitated by Loki.”

“Allegedly.”

“And when your poor, homely mother begged for Baldr to be returned from death--” 

“Sorry, did you call my mum ‘homely’?”

“Every single thing in every world wept for him, except Loki. Now, you arrive unkempt at my door, refusing my flattery, asking me to weep for Loki? Loki Laufeyson?”

“Not exact--”

“No,” Aelsa said, hackles raised and an angry thrumming coming from her thorax. “I am pleased to tell you I know nothing at all of your Valhalla, nor how to return your dead to the living, and if I did, nothing could persuade me to tell you for Loki’s sake.”

Thor stood at last. “You’ve been really unhelpful, thank you.”

“Good. Leave my hive and return in a century, when I have cooled down and forgotten how you’ve upset me so.”

\- - - - - - - - -

The nice thing about Alfheim was that it was permanently nice, and being forced out into the wilds wasn’t any kind of hardship. 

Thor walks until the meadows turned craggy and ivy grew from mountainous walls, and at least there was something like shade found in a shallow cave. The plush moss within hums indulgently as Thor sits down to rest. 

Loki would have said,  _ That could’ve gone better. _

It hurts to hear it so clearly, but there’s a comfort to how familiar it is. The last time he’d said that, they had been so much younger, although still chased out of Alfheim. Thor sighs, wrestling his boots off, still sore from the hike through Vanaheim. 

_ Loki?  _ Aelsa’s disbelief, almost disgust. _ Loki Laufeyson? _

“I know you aren’t easy to love, but.” Thor murmurs, watching pollen dance in the shafts of inescapable sunlight. Soft insects with no biting parts drift from bloom to bloom out in the canyon. “Didn’t think we left that bad of an impression.”

_ Oh, I’m sure I got up to all sorts of mischief without you to make it charming. How could I not, a perfect place like this? You enjoyed riling them up, too. I just never stopped _ . 

Well, it was true. The last time they’d been here together, the last time it could’ve went better, it had been rowdy fun. No one truly getting hurt.

They had come back victorious from something, as they always were in those days, and Alfheim loved good cheer more than anything. 

_ Bring me your most beautiful daughter _ , Thor had roared at the crowd of Light Elves stuffed into the tavern,  _ to pour this honey you claim as mead! _

It had been fun. For fun. Light Elves prize beauty, and the hobby of flaunting it had become an art. Among all the music and sea of laughing, smiling elves, Thor had forgotten whatever passed as troubles in those days. A mysterious flutter of emerald wings and a striking dark smile had snagged his attention and without thinking, Thor grabbed the appropriate waist and held her high, declaring he had found the most beautiful.

It had been Loki, of course, disguised as a Light Elf, and the whole crowd had turned on them at once. Furious that they would come to Alfheim and find an outsider, a fake, most attractive. 

He had laughed loud enough to bring down sweet, warm rain as they fled, not thinking any real harm had been done. Had it? What had Loki done without him here, or elsewhere?

Eyes drifting shut, Thor feels the ache deep in his chest again. Could he have acted differently, to encourage the better in Loki? What would he had to have done to make Loki worth the tears of every world?

What a dream. Alfheim hums around him, fragrant and tepid. It could be the two of them here together, like his dream. They would’ve approached Aelsa together-- 

_ “How could we rest, knowing our sister lies tormented in some lonely corner of Niflheim?” Loki leans forward, earnestly capturing Aelsa’s hand in his. “Just as the Nine Realms heal, we want to bring her home, make our family whole. My mother wishes it, my father allows it. We seek only your aid, my Queen, your blessing.” _

Because that’s how they would find themselves on this journey, the two of them, for Hela. A hard woman to love, but with their whole family waiting for her, they could do it. They could remind her of love and channel her power for the protection of all the realms, not just the glory of Asgard. 

Aelsa would say yes, of course, anything for her Odinsons, and she would have some tale of a worm that grants wishes if only you feed it forever, or some fable to chase and some rule to outsmart. 

And they would be welcome in the hivepalace, even as Loki would shut and lock the doors, draw the curtains until they had the only darkness in the realm, climb atop Thor amid a sea of cushion and thick flowerdown silks. Not even bothering with the guise of a Light Elf, knowing that his lean body starting to rock again Thor’s would be enough to set the mood. 

What a trespass, one of them would whisper, to be Alfheim’s guests and fuck only my brother. 

The dream deepens suddenly, too quickly. Thor feels the realization open up inside him, expanding with the force to tear and break-- making Loki someone everyone mourned would render him a stranger. 

_ I don’t want everyone to love you. _ Thor imagines himself saying it, feels himself speak it in the waking world. The shell of Loki’s ear, hot from his breath _. I want you to be Loki and to be mine. _

His hips buck like his body could chase Loki’s back into the dream, but Thor is awake again. Time had barely passed and the sweat under his armor feels sour even in the cloying safety of this stupid Alfheim grotto. 

Stormbreaker slaps his palm as he calls it, snatching his boots up and wandering half-hard and irritable into the ravine. Following the musical sound of falling water, he finds an idyllic waterfall and pool, picturesque as possible.

Not trusting himself to be unclothed, Thor wades in, dunks himself and shakes like a bear, the water refusing to be anything but the perfect temperature, even when he curses at it.

There is nothing for him in Alfheim, he decides, wrestling his boots on bitterly. All the perfumed air and warmth of the suns feel stifling, lazy. 

Valhalla is not here. Loki is not here. Time to move on. 

  
  
  



	5. JOTUNHEIM

  
  


**=====**

**JOTUNHEIM**

Taking another bite of the fresh apple, Thor found himself in a realm he knew well, yet the appearance of it seemed foreign to him as if another land entirely. 

Jotunheim, home of the Frost Giants and stage to many of the hardest won battles for Asgard against Laufey, notorious conquerer and wrathful warlord. Just as Thor’s father, Odin, had driven their horde back to the very heart of this realm as punishment, Thor too had won battles here in his youth, proud to walk in his father’s footsteps.

Now older, Thor looked upon what had become of Jotunheim in the absence of Asgardians, and wept. 

The craggy mountains of blue stone and gritty ice remained, but layers of soft snow covered well-constructed houses of stone and ironwood. Below him stretched flatlands, the enormous antlered kaldelg grazing unbothered on the tundra, magnificent beasts that he had seen only as bones and carvings on smashed temple walls. A great dam held back a lake of such size and beauty as to be an ocean to smaller folk, the shore a ring of fishery ponds. 

And Thor Odinson thought of New Asgard, capital of Tonsberg of Middle Earth, his home which became more far flung the more he traveled, and saw that they were not different at all. His tears fell as both shame and relief, for never knowing their people were the same in these ways. 

Naturally the thunder that accompanied Thor drew at last Jotunn, Frost Giants clothed gaily in small jewels the size of a man's fist and strings of jólakötturinn fangs, who greeted Thor without anger or fear, and in fact marveled at his cute size. 

“I am Thor Odinson, of Asgard,” Thor said, uncertainly, but the Jotunn laughed, standing perhaps only four heads above Thor. 

“How unfortunate for you, then, Thordinson, for Asgard is long destroyed,” said one giant. “And how fortunate for you, then, Thordinson, for Jotunheim welcomes even lost travelers from ages long passed.”

“I don’t understand,” admitted Thor, after convincing the giants he did not need to be carried and somewhat disappointing them by refusing to be held. They led him down the steep tundra hill, the shrieking wind calming the lower into the valley they descended. “When last I visited Jotunheim, we were enemies. No town existed here, certainly, only warriors and barren temples.”

“If you say so,” said one of his guides. “Are you perhaps a wandering fool? I see you have given away one of your eyes already, rest assured we will not ask for anything.”

The two Frost Jotunn led Thor to an enormous structure, the great eaves coated with icicles guided to form glittering lattices, each sharp taper carved blunt. Inside the hall Thor was no warmer, but great chandeliers of glowing lichen illuminated a wonderful mead hall.

At last his guides presented him to the largest Frost Giant, who knelt to better see Thor, his blue and gnarled face lined with ages. He named himself as Hirvi and welcomed Thor, though he was puzzled. 

“I have questions your guides could not answer, if you have a moment, King Hirvi,” said Thor. 

“These are my young sons, who wear my jólakötturinn fangs until they can claim their own, I should imagine there are many questions they could not answer.” Seeing that this meant nothing to Thor, Hirvi sent them out to play and let Thor climb to a bench to sit on, leaving them a bit closer to eye level. “Let us see if we can exchange welcoming gifts, questions for answers, Thordinson.”

“I am an Asgardian,” Thor explained. “It could not have been more than six years since Asgard was destroyed by Ragnarok, and not more than ten years since I last visited Jotunheim and found it quite different.”

“Well, perhaps my sons could have answered that,” Hirvi chuckled. “Jotunheim sits on a far bough of the World Tree. On your side, you have grown quite accustomed to how time passes. The long winds of gravity make time here unusually long in your view, though it seems normal to us. The gravitational effect of Yggdrasil moulds spacetime. Relativity dictates that we have passed thousands of years since your last visit.”

“Oh,” said Thor, astonished.

“Were our people very different then?” Hirvi asked, great red eyes now alight with curiosity. “No real records remain apart from our scrimshaws, and in such scarcity we fear them to be nonrepresentative.”

“I only knew your people as enemies, at war and uneasy peace,” said Thor Odinson, suddenly feeling quite hot and sick in his armor. “I’m ashamed to say I know nothing.”

Hirvi was clearly disappointed, but stroked his frosted beard and sent a light dusting of snow everywhere. “There is no shame in admitting ignorance, Thordinson. What brings you back to Jotunheim now?”

“I search for my brother, a Frost Giant himself,” Thor leaned forward, eager to move on to the subject of his quest. “Loki Laufeyson, killed and now trapped in Valhalla. I believe, anyway.”

“Oh? Was he Halved and not returned to you?” Hirvi asked, and Thor understood his meaning.

“Technically, he was killed pre-Halving, but by the giant who Halved… who did the Halving. Anyway-- where do Frost Giants go when they die? Perhaps I might search for him in your afterlife, if such a place is accessible.”

Hirvi thought for a very long moment, a few Giants passing by through the hall and looking at Thor with puzzlement. “I’m afraid such a place does not exist in the way that you know it. How long do your people live, Thor?”

“Thousands of years,” Thor answered, crestfallen. “Barring accident, I suppose.”

“We Jotunns are much the same. If nothing destroys us, then we live as long as we desire to, fed by the sun and the snow and the wind. And occasionally fish, for fun. So you see, every Giant must grapple alone with death, with what they believe heralds their time to leave and return to the stone and frost of Jotunheim.”

Hirvi explained this to Thor, that every Giant who concluded their life surely did it with a different afterlife in mind. In this way, there were as many heavens as there were Giants, and whether or not they existed in a provable sense did not matter.

“Thordinson, it worries me to see you pursue the private end of your brother,” Hirvi said, not unkindly. “You are so young and small, and you must preserve yourself more carefully.” 

“I am full grown and quite tired of this world,” Thor said, not seeing the point in hiding his grief from a stranger. “I have lost my family, I have done things that fill me with unspeakable shame, and I have left my friends behind. To see my brother restored is my only wish.”

“Don’t say that,” Hirvi said, now quite disturbed, and gathered Thor into his palm without protest. The God of Thunder was tired from his ceaseless journey and deeply troubled by the apparent futility of it. “The road has made you weary and dejected. Stay in my hall and become my son for your stay, and let us puzzle out a way to lighten your load.”

“I cannot,” cried Thor. “I am Thor Odinson, blood of the man who was proud to destroy your race, who stole your son for his own, and I cannot bear your kindness knowing I deserve none of it.” 

Thor leapt from the Frost Giant’s palm, and was allowed to run from the hall, a small crackle of thunder transporting him out and away, back to the mountains of Jotunheim, where it was so cold and sharp as to freeze his tears, though he only shed more. 

\- - - - - - - - -

It wells up in him, the farther he walks, the more he clambers over snow and stone, trying to get lost. As far away from the village as he can manage, dreaming of freezing to a solid statue and shattering into nothing. 

_ Surely you had to know,  _ Loki says, alighted upon the snow bank, amused and bitter.  _ Deep down, you had to know they were people. After all, I was people, shouldn’t it follow the rest of them are? Frost Giants, I mean? _

“It’s too much,” Thor’s eyes burn from the cold and his lips crack and he tastes blood, some of it blooming in front of him with his breath in pink clouds. “I just-- I can’t answer for this, Loki. I can’t even begin to-- to grasp it, to grapple with what he did, what Odin did to them, what I was so proud to do--”

_ So the response is to curl up and die. _ Loki’s eyebrows do something complex, even though Thor isn’t looking at him, isn’t looking at anything but the snow, the white of the ground and the air and the light.  _ I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You spent five years on Fortnite and craft porters instead of doing anything useful. If we’re having this conversation, Odin was also fond of just locking things into boxes and shoving them under the bed as well.  _

“What’s worse, that this is really you somehow tormenting me, or the best way I can torment myself is to dream of you telling me the truth?”

_ Well, it doesn’t matter, since you’re experiencing it as if it were real. _ A classic Loki shrug, pale fingers steepled in mock innocence. 

Knees giving out, Thor collapses into the snow, rolling onto his back and looking up to the snowstorm raging above, stealing each prickling breath away and into the wind. 

Maybe Loki’s heaven was being a ghost in his brain. He just wants to sleep, to retreat into the nonsense dream he’s been fostering alongside the journey, that somehow Loki is here with him and they’re saving Hela and their family is still alive. And while he’s at it, Asgard never smashed Jotunheim into a stone age, Odin never controlled the Nine Realms with threat and force and Thor never let himself live in that blissful, violent ignorance. 

_ Maybe you ought to go back and try being Thor Hirvison. _ Loki, curled under his chin, nose buried in his neck and foot hooking around Thor’s ankle.  _ Might be nice to have a better dad. _

Thor wants to curl up, but it would disturb the illusion he can almost feel, Loki’s weight on him and somehow warm despite the blizzard. “I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to feel better.”

The specter of Loki is silent, and Thor knows that sleeping in the snow is always a bad idea, but the thought of a numb pass into nothing is too good to give up, and he lays still, willing himself to turn to ice. 

  
  



	6. NIDAVELLIR

  
  


**======**

**NIDAVELLIR**

With a heavy heart, the next bite of the apple took Thor through the depths of space and left him on the doorstep of Nidavellir, still coated in the snow of the Jotunn’s mountains. 

For thousands of years the dwarven rings had spun around the cascading neutron star Hreidmar, stilling only once under the fateful rule of King Eitri Orefinger. Thor had always found wisdom and solace in these hallowed smithys, from the first sparks struck on beloved Mjolnir to the final casting of Thor’s Stormcaller. 

It was by the smell of that great axe’s metal that King Eitri found his visitor, and let out a great cry of surprise to see Thor, and to see him so bedraggled. 

“Thor!” Eitri exclaimed. “At last you return! An axe isn’t like a hammer, you know, it requires sharpening. What hells have you crawled through to visit us?”

“Eitri, I am sorry,” Thor began, feeling a great emotion rise up at the sight of an old comrade. “I’m here for something else, but may I rest a moment? I find us ever more alike, Eitri, and I appreciate your loneliness even more.”

“Er, well,” said Eitri.

“Thanos took everything from you, your people, your hands-- I find myself unable to hold on to what matters most in this world now as well. Though I am miserable company, may I at least be your company in sorrow,” Thor finished.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Eitri mumbled, off-kilter to now be embarrassed instead of proud. “We’re doing alright, actually.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” said Thor. “Me too. All that stuff I said, forget it. Didn’t want to brag about how good I am, also, but now that you are obviously okay, I can agree and relate.”

King Eitri showed Thor the newly-revived Nidavellir, now a far cry from the frozen ruins and cold forge Thor had thrown himself against when last he came. Now, the forges ran white hot with metals flowing to molds in smooth assembly, the smells beautifully toxic and fountains of sparks flying. Young dwarves no taller than Thor tempered and sculptured the weapons as well as the forges’ mechanisms themselves, repairing and restoring even as work continued. 

“Dwarves, after all, are borne from stone, so…” Eitri trailed off, hands clasped, a silent reminder of how things had improved at Nidavellir. When Thor saw him last, his hands had been lumps of useless ore, now carved and crafted into mechanical tools and fingers most delicate and functional, the elegant pinnacle of dwarven crafts.

“I am happy for you, Eitri,” thor said as they stopped on a viewing platform, Nidavellir’s heart warm on their faces and space cold at their backs. “Truly. To go from nothing to all this is no easy task.”

“It did not happen all at once.” Eitri stroked his beard, now glossy and well-kept. It seemed to the Dwarven King that Thor’s fortunes had taken a further turn for the worse, even since the defeat of Thanos. The Thor before him was half-wild with grief, shredded by forces without and within, and it saddened his heart. “What brings you to us, Thor?”

Thor sighed, eye fixed on the neutron star. “I am searching across the Nine Realms for my brother Loki, or my way to him in Valhalla.”

“Bold of you to assume he ended up there.”

“Well, I have to believe in something.” Thor smiled unhappily. 

“Though still thawing, Nidavellir has a library of some repute. Would you rest in my hall while my sons search for answers here? Whatever we know will be yours,” Eitri offered, and gestured to Stormcaller. “We can care for your axe as well, get you both back to fighting shape.”

“I would only be a poor guest, Eitri.”

“Then I’ll kick you out when I’ve had enough, boy,” the King said gruffly, thinking of Thor in his loudest and most outrageous youth, and longing to see some spark of that again. 

\- - - - - - - - -

The part of him that doesn’t want to disappoint Eitri is ultimately stronger than his despair, and Thor lets some rough behind the ears dwarven youth lead him through the ring to a guest room. Their excited chatter is more for Stormcaller than for him, and he would’ve preferred that except for the following silence when they leave, taking the axe with them. The chill and dark of the room feels a physical thing he has to wade through.

_ “You could get lost in this bed,”  _ Loki remarks, lounging on it, boots on and no indentation in the quilts, wrong but better than nothing.  _ “They probably should’ve put you up in the nursery to keep things to scale.” _

“Is this how I’m filling up the quiet?” Thor feels stupid talking aloud, entertaining the delusion. But he is stupid, and no one’s around to worry about him. “Imagining you?”

_ “Do you want to be alone?” _ Without looking, he knows Loki’s eyes are glittering.

“No.”

_ “Then stop stalling and come over here.” _

Head down like a cowed dog, Thor goes where he’s told, ashamed but grateful to give up and give into the fantasy. To simply act and pretend that Loki is at the other end of it. 

Before his knees can touch the bed, Loki’s pale fingertips stop him, suddenly illuminating the rusted and rotten armor.  _ “Nevermind. Go bathe, first.”  _

Thor thinks mutinously that if this is his breakdown and his fantasy, why should it matter? (Does he even deserve to feel clean? Wouldn’t it be better/worse to just beat off and sleep on the floor in his own self pity and filth?)

The wrinkle of a familiar nose.  _ “Don’t be a boor. Just go do it.” _

The bath is the size of a pool, larger than Thor wants or needs, but it fills quickly with water steaming from proximity to the forges. Thor sinks in, water lapping at the tiles edges. He finds rocks like soap, and just some regular rocks, and between them manages to sand off five realms’ worth of grime, automatically, not thinking. 

His hair clings to the water and weighs him down, Thor leaning back to float. The warmth of the water and the steam above leave him suspended for a moment in the same temperature all around. 

_ “Thinking about hacking it off?” _ Loki’s fingers, stirring his hair, teasing with the promise of nails on skin. _ “I didn’t mind you shorn. But I did miss pulling it.” _

Loki’s fingers had laced in tight against his scalp, that last night aboard the ship headed to Midgard. He’d still been used to Thor’s long hair, missing the easy leash it gave him. He’d held on to Thor tightly however he could, weathering his brother’s pace when they finally retired to the same cramped room. Loki was always slow to give up whatever his body had recently learned, but neither of them disliked Thor fucking it out of him, back to his own pleasures and rhythms. 

He wonders how long he could go, floating and staring up at the dark ceiling, cock interested but struggling with fatigue. Thor worries for a moment that jerking off might somehow wring Loki out of him, clear his head of the now-comforting cobwebs. Then worries that he’s gotten so attached to the hallucination. 

_ “Do it, then,”  _ Loki snaps, Thor’s neck twinging with the imagined yank of his hair. He wishes for Loki to be soft with him and finds that he can’t imagine being deserving of it.  _ “Heave your bulk out of the water where I can see you. Where the dwarves can walk in on you.” _

It shouldn’t work, but it does, Thor gracing a forearm against the edge of the bath and hiking a leg up as he jerks off, far enough out so that his skin doesn’t slap the waterline lewdly. Desperately. 

He’d always fought Loki when he’d wanted something like this, pleased to resist and be the bratty one, for once. There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for Loki now, hips bucking unsteadily and wet hair hanging limp on his back.

_ “That’s good,” _ Loki, murmuring in his ear or pressed up against his chest, hand laced over Thor’s or kneading around his asshole. Either. Both.  _ “You always did like to show off.” _

In truth his whole body aches to be touched, worn out muscles singing for contact, for real heat and weight. Thor pictures himself at the knot of a bunch of rowdy dwarves, begging for calloused fingers in his ass and fucking as long as they want his holes. The vague threat of Eitri’s disappointment, disgust, seasons it. At last, someone would see how he was doing, how far Thor had fallen. What he was good for. 

_ “Stop that.” _ Half-hissing, half-snarl. Loki, stung. Thor’s throat closes up, he crawls out of the bath to push his face into the crook of his elbow, shivery with pleasure and misery. _ “I don’t want to hear that, not now. You’re mine, I might show you off, but you are  _ mine _. Don’t think of anyone but me.” _

It feels so good to think that, to want it so terribly, hot tears prickle and Thor’s breathing goes ragged and he won’t, won’t cry, not now, not for want of that. 

_ “I don’t care if you’re crying.”  _ The low, tight voice of Loki inside him, lodged deep and in control. Right against his ear.  _ “You just need to come.” _

Thor can do that, at least.

  
  
  



	7. SVARTALFHEIM

  
  


**=======**

**SVARTALFHEIM**

Before the next rotational shift could begin, Thor had taken another bite of the waning apple and left Nidavellir quietly so as not to disturb his hosts, unable to sleep and overcome with nightmares. He left empty-handed and bare of armor, and Svartalfheim snatched harshly at his sleeping clothes with its irradiated wind, sliced at his feet with a sea of black shale and sand. 

Above stretched dark velvet clouds long punctured by the same Asgardian warships now rusted coal black and sunk into the same desert as the Dark Elf battle cruisers. 

Thor looked at the blasted landscape and saw nothing there for him, or for his brother, or the people who had once lived there. Knowing what he did now, Thor turned away, only able to see the terrible vision of his brother Loki dying in this same wasteland, and how real it had felt on the heels of Frigga’s death. And then, the terrible relief when Loki revealed himself again-- just a game, just a trick. 

All the well-meaning comfort of Nidavellir left Thor, and pain and fury gripped him as he flung the apple aside and charged into the graveyard of his grandfather’s war, tearing stones and metal from the ground, melting the earth into glass with forests of thunder. There was no one in Svartalfheim to hurt.

\- - - - - - - - -

“I am going mad,” Thor says, his first words in what feels like a lifetime of roaring. 

“So you’ve just now decided?” Loki asks, examining dust under his nails atop another anonymous ruin of metal. 

“All I hear is you, all I see is you, and you aren’t even there.” He slumps down, back scraping against a crater of his own making. Thor’s hands are caked in dark dust, spotted with blood. His clothes are just clothes and hang on him the same way his skin feels on his bones. Tired rags. 

“I have left everything, even my axe, but it still hasn’t brought me any closer.” Despair and rage choke him with gritty tears.

“Tiresome,” Loki declares, and Thor’s eyes light on the discarded apple, somehow uncrushed, somehow simply there. “And foolish. Where’s the first place you should look for lost things?”

_ Odin,  _ Loki saying.  _ The scrape of a key in a lock, the gleam of antlers in darkness. Locking things in boxes. _

“Under the bed.” Thor lunges for the apple.


	8. NIFLHEIM

**========**

**NIFLHEIM**

So with the last bite of its flesh, the apple brought Thor Odinson to Niflheim, known to other peoples as Niflhel, and to others still as Hel. 

This was a new and terrible land, and to Thor’s dismay it was familiar-- an endless flat cavern stretched ahead into the distance, the air thick with freezing and the steady sound of grinding ice. Far off peppers of cracking glaciers. 

Struck to the bone with the cold, Thor fell to his knees, looking deep into the bottomless ice and river below. 

Hope stirred in his breast as he saw ghosts there, sliding in constellations beneath the ice, but no call could rouse them to his aid, and the cold only grew worse. Overcome with sorrow and frustration, Thor called for his mother, for Loki, for any soul left that might be able to hear him and willing to help. Niflheim swallowed it without an echo, and the ice refused to break under his hands and bloodied fists. 

When he had quieted, at last there was the sound of too many hoofbeats on the glassy ice, and Thor looked up from where he had hunched and curled in on himself in pain, and saw Sleipnir. The dark horse, borne of Loki, able to ferry a rider to and from the depths of Hel.

Dismounting from the great horse’s long back, the rider appeared to Thor as a maiden, burning with white flames, smokeless and calm. Still, as if she had been waiting for him. 

“Please,” Thor begged, throat cracked and breath steaming. “Loki. He must be here.”

But the girl would say nothing, not even reflecting in Sleipnir’s many eyes. 

“He must be here,” insisted Thor, teeth gritted and body wracked with the pain of a broken heart. “There is nowhere left to look. To go.”

Before him, the maiden burned taller and more fiercely, until Thor saw she was his size, his shape, and he saw himself burning now, trapped in the cycle of love and death as surely as Surtur and the World Tree and every realm he had set foot in. 

And Thor felt the unfairness well up within him, at the cruelty of it and the banality of it and the promise of endless suffering, and felt spite that was neither wise nor flattering for someone of his age. He seized the core of Yggdrasil’s apple and ate it whole, the image of the lone burning rider on Hel’s bridge his last glimpse of Niflheim. 

  
  


\- - - - - - - - -

  
  


And so Thor found himself amid rocks and dust and the burning gases of space, in the heart between all Nine Realms. 

And as he drifted, rocks were drawn to his orbit, his tears became water and ice, and something began to form. In the distance space around and beyond the Nine Realms he had so faithfully searched, each could be seen to burn brightly, then burn out, leaving the boughs of the World Tree darkened and bare. 

And, because it is how trees grow, a sapling pushed forth between Thor’s ribs, and began to grow again.

  
  


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“And everyone,” says Loki, wiping apple juice off his mouth with the back of his hand. “Lived happily ever after, all thanks to Thor, the incredible and unselfish, ad infinitum. Sounds about right?”

The book bearing the story doesn’t answer, propped on his knees with a thick cover and pages yellowed with time. The tree doesn’t answer, lodged in this remote and ancient ravine, growing enormous towards the sunlight above, moss coating the rocks and pollen hanging in the sun. The skull barely visible amid its roots is quiet, too, brushstroke ribs snapped or aloft through the tangle of growth.

“Well, listen.” Loki stands, tosses the book over his shoulder, bored. “I may not be the exact Loki you remember, but you _are_ my Thor.”

Taking a last big bite from the apple he had picked from the boughs of this particular tree, he chucks that away too, wiping his hands before cinching them around the smooth handle of the old axe, once rumored to be named Stormcaller.

“And I’d say you’ve waited quite long enough,” says Loki, settling his weight, pulling the axe back to swing. “Brother mine.” 

  
  
  



End file.
